


The Unquiet Grave

by mitchmachina



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Ghosts, Goth!Gerard, M/M, Supernatural AU - Freeform, idk what else to tag lol, lots of forests and spooky fog, probably gravedigging and lots of herb talk, reaper!Frank, spells
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 11:35:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10853163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitchmachina/pseuds/mitchmachina
Summary: Frank is a reaper, and Gerard is a small-town goth with prophetic nightmares. Frank wants to help him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! so, i'm mitch, and this is my first fic! don't be an asshole!!! BIG GIANT HUGS to @knameless for betaing the fuck out of this bitch!!! i hope you like this lmao i worked my ass off... please leave kudos or feedback so i know people are reading it and have motivation to finish! thanks

The guy shook his shaggy black hair out of his eyes and leaned against the cold brick wall behind the high school, slowly sliding down the wall until he and his black messenger bag hit the ground with a muffled, gravelly thump. With a dramatic sigh, he dragged a pack of cigarettes out of his trench coat pocket and lit one. Smoke curled from his lips, ghostly in the semi-darkness.  
He was pretty, Frank thought, pretty like a girl would be, with soft black hair framing his pale round face and a way of holding himself that made him look a little graceful even as he slouched. Too bad Frank was dead, he lamented, leaning up against the wall next to the boy. He looked interesting, maybe like someone Frank could’ve been friends with when he was alive.

It really was too bad, Frank thought, watching the boy’s cigarette smoke curl up into the cloudy sky. Not that he didn’t love his job as a Reaper, and working for Dewees and the Lost Souls Society was a better situation than most Reapers could’ve had, but he missed the whole living thing. Before Dewees had dragged him out of the gutter and given him a job, he’d been a complete wreck, and as grateful to James as he was, Frank couldn’t shake that oppressive feeling he got from the sheer amount of fucking rules he had to follow. “No talking to the living” was his least favorite. Dead people were usually so boring. They'd already figured out life's great mystery - what happens once you kick the bucket - and now they had nothing left to wonder about. Boring as shit. Maybe it wouldn’t have bothered him so much if he wasn’t so rebellious at heart, he thought, looking up at the dusky, dark woods behind the high school. He was too damn rebellious.  
He’d finally gotten an assignment from Dewees that wasn’t just picking up suicides, though, some business in Lament, Oregon-- that’s who this boy was, Frank’s new assignment. 

His name was Gerard, and he had a brother named Mikey, a mom named Donna, and nightmares to rival the saints. He also had a black leather trenchcoat and about ten pounds of eyeliner on, but Frank wasn’t complaining. It was just fine to watch him exhale carcinogens into the otherwise starry sky from a dimension just far enough to keep him hidden, but close enough so that he could almost smell the boy’s cigarette smoke as it dissipated into the atmosphere. Frank slid down the wall next to the boy and sat and waited for his mom with him - with him, he thought, even though Gerard had no idea he was there.  
Soon enough an old station wagon pulled up and honked its horn twice, impatiently. Gerard hurriedly stubbed the remainder of his cigarette out (Frank snickered; he remembered how it was when health apparently mattered to people, he’d had shitty lungs when he was alive) and somehow managed to slide his way upwards, holding on to his bag lazily with not much more than a languid pinky. Frank marveled. How the hell did this kid manage to look graceful with all the energy of a sloth with a hangover? His posture spoke of a life spent in alleyways and forest glens alone but his attitude somehow said something different. Something cocky, but somehow sad, as if his apathy was slowly strangling his ambition.

Frank remained seated and watched Gerard trudge over to the station wagon and slump into the seat, the sharp light of the high beams sending a glow out into the dark blue forest. Frank looked out from his vantage point at the wall and watched the car retreat into the darkness until the fog settled around him and he had no more reason to stay. A racoon at the edge of the woods was the only one who saw him blink out of sight. The wind rustled through the trees.  
He’d be back tomorrow - and this time, it wouldn’t be a dimension over. It’d be in class, alongside Gerard and everyone else in the school. He could already smell the hormones and fear. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

-

“Hey, Dewees? Yeah. Yeah, I saw the kid. I’m going into school today. Lament is seriously weird. Okay. Talk later. Send me some instructions or something, hell.”  
Frank snapped his underworld standard enchanted phone shut and stared at it for a minute, wondering how it could have so many spells on it as to allow him to contact the underworld and still manage to be downright shitty. He looked in the mirror of the apartment he’d been granted by the Lost Souls and ran his hair through his bangs. He looked like your average high school student, he supposed - he still looked like the sixteen-year-old he’d been when he’d died, and save for the sparse tattoos peeking out from under his hoodie and the unnatural paleness of his skin contrasting them, he figured he was good to go.  
Late last night after leaving the school, he’d found a note in his suit pocket telling him to go to an address where there’d been an apartment waiting for him. A woman had died there a few months back, and it’d been empty since. According to the note, all it had taken was a couple memory tweaks from Dewees to make the landlady think she’d met Frank a month ago and he’d since moved in, paying rent steadily and causing no trouble. When Frank had gotten there the night before he’d found a backpack on the bed waiting for him, filled with clothes and the equipment necessary for dealing with various chthonic forces and entities - the works.  
He’d also found a file and a letter tucked into the foremost flap - the file was written on aged and odd-smelling parchment, and it was full of details on Gerard’s case. It said he was sixteen, five-foot nine, of ambiguous sexuality - and his grandmother, Elena, had been one of the few living allies to the Lost Souls, venturing into the territory that the dead couldn’t have the privilege of touching. Apparently Gerard had been the only one in the room when Elena died - they’d been close - and all that energy, the fantastic power that had been accumulated by years of wisdom and experience going where few living people had gone before, had flowed into Gerard like an electric shock. 

Soon afterward, he’d started having nightmares - dreams of bleeding eyes and being tangled in funeral shrouds and not being able to free himself, the file said - and Gerard and his family moved from the suburb of Belleville, New Jersey they’d always called home to the small and strangely ethereal town of Lament, Oregon, for what Gerard’s shrink called “peace and quiet”. Elena had had an old house there. Everyone had figured it’d be best for the family to “reconnect with old memories” and such, but the nightmares still didn’t stop. 

They got worse, as a matter of fact, and started coinciding with the anniversaries of events that’d happened either a hundred years back to create major hauntings or incidents that’d happen from a week to a day after Gerard’s had the dreams. He dreamt of fire - the old church burnt down. He dreamt of running through the woods, desperate and panting, from something he couldn’t look back on, and it was the death-date of a woman who’d been chased and buried deep in the forest, where they didn’t find her until years later. 

Turns out the town with the highest rate of hauntings and energetic disturbances in the United States isn’t the smartest place to go when you’re dealing with prophetic nightmares and the death of your supernaturally gifted grandmother. He needed guidance, and by some cosmic joke, Frank Iero, Lost Soul’s most inexperienced Reaper, had been sent to help him. Frank had no idea why Dewees thought that he was a good idea, like, why couldn’t they have sent Molko or something, he probably would’ve bonded with Gerard over eyeshadow or whatever, but no, they’d sent Frank. They’d sent Frank and now he was going to high school all over again. What a fucking riot.

 

He opened the letter that had come with the file and saw that it wasn’t a letter after all. It was a high school schedule. He groaned.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can already tell this fic is gonna consume my life lmao. anyway enjoy the second chapter!!!!

Frank shuffled onto the campus as the sun was coming up so he could have the chance to see the fog again. It swirled around his shins, damper than he thought it would be. The woods behind the school echoed with bird calls both faraway and nearby, and Frank’s fingers tightened on the straps of his backpack. Nobody was around yet, save the animal residents of the forest. Serene was the only word for it. The school loomed behind him, damp dismal brick completely and utterly repelling, but the forest stood ahead, stately and dark. He’d been standing so long that the mist had completely settled around his shins, and he thought, fuck this, and quickly slipped into the shadows of the trees. 

It wasn’t as dark in the forest as he’d expected it to be, but it was cold and damp and he kept hearing footsteps behind him even though he knew there was nobody there. If there had been somebody there he would have felt it. He didn’t feel anything unusual, really, aside from the chill and the mist and the energy any place over a hundred years old has, forests especially. Natural places have it most, he thought to himself, bounding over a thick and gnarled root tearing up the forest floor. He walked through the forest slowly, occasionally pausing to lay a hand on the bark of a tree or stop dead in his tracks and listen to the branches rustle. Frank liked forests more now than he did when he was alive because if you’re a servant of Death, you’ve got a little more grace and a little more ability to keep from tripping over roots and such, go figure. Now he could focus on the ancient beauty of the place and not have to worry about falling flat on his face. Being a Reaper meant you could see things humans couldn’t, obviously, so there was also that. Sometimes he swore the trees were talking, and just a moment ago he thought he saw a will-o’-the-wisp hovering deeper in the forest, glowing softly. Of course, he hadn’t been in forests much since he died, so it was probably getting to him. 

He was walking backwards, whistling an old song he heard someone in the office singing once, when he stumbled and fell backwards, his head hitting what seemed to be a flat slab of stone embedded into the ground. 

Yeah, the forest was totally getting to him. He never fucking tripped. He sat up, rubbing the back of his head and cursing, and turned around.  
Oh. Okay. A cemetery. So that’s what was in the forest that had compelled him to go in. About twenty five weathered, crooked headstones stuck up out of the mossy green forest floor, hidden from the sun by tall and imposing fir trees on every side. He could feel the presence of the corpses in their coffins, benign but unforgettable, like the scent of incense burning in a cathedral. The dead were quiet here. He didn’t hear any whispering.  
He squinted to read the old and faded writing on the headstone he’d fallen on, tracing the letters with a pale and callused finger. Enoch Blum, 1880 - 1901. He’d died young. That was sad. 

Frank sat for a moment and patted the headstone in an almost consoling manner. It was almost completely overcome by the moss that covered the forest floor. Soon it would be completely hidden.

Suddenly, he heard a rustling, like the shifting of fabric against fabric, and looked up, and there was the boy. His assignment. Gerard.

He was standing stiffly on the edge of a path (a path, there was a path, Frank thought dimly, he could’ve taken the path) draped in what Frank assumed was his usual leather trenchcoat and what looked like three different dresses, layered over one another, all black, in various conditions of bleach-splattered disrepair and ripped seams. He was wearing around ten necklaces, big muddy combat boots, thickly smeared eye makeup, and was holding a cigarette in his pale slender hand, letting it burn away in favor of staring at Frank. He looked like some kind of forest witch, or something similar, anyway. Mostly he just looked confused. 

Frank decided to try and make a good impression. He stood up and dusted himself off, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “Hi. Uh, I’m Frank. I’m new.”  
Gerard’s shoulders tensed. Frank could feel the anxiety and apprehension coming off him in thick waves.

“To the school?”

Frank barked out a short giggle at how different Gerard’s voice was from what he was expecting. He was expecting something smoother, maybe? His previous glimpses of Gerard hadn’t shown this side of him - but of course not, the other times Frank had seen him Gerard had thought he was alone. Gerard’s voice was more awkward and nasal than he had expected - his every emotion was apparent in his intonation, and he just sounded so teenage - but it was nice. Calming, somehow. Frank felt immediately at ease and decided to be friendly. He was here to help the guy, after all.

“Yeah, dude, what else? You a senior?”

Gerard visibly relaxed some, although there was still a faint aura of discomfort around him. 

“Um. Yes. Gerard.” He cringed, slumping inward, gesturing faintly with his free hand. “I mean, my name’s Gerard. Gerard Way.” He straightened up, cigarette completely forgotten. “So, uh, what’re you doing out here? Usually I’m the only one who comes back here. ‘S kinda my...uh...spot.” 

Frank cracked a smile at that. If only he knew. “Nothing. I dunno. Exploring, you?”

Gerard did some more awkward shuffling in the dirt (he did that a lot, Frank noticed) and shrugged. “Um, I live back here,” he said, gesturing toward a pointy-roofed house behind him, hidden in some trees. It looked like it would fall apart any minute (just like everything else in Lament, what the hell, Frank thought to himself). Frank smiled and drew a line in the dirt with his sneaker. 

Gerard tensed up again a little bit. Frank could feel it, like the air was contracting and going metallic around them. Frank stood up straight and looked him in the eye in the hopes that it would calm him down (Reapers had a mild sedative quality to their presences, it was necessary to keep people from freaking out when they found out they were dead) but when Gerard met Frank’s eyes he recoiled and dropped the forgotten cigarette, shoving his hands in his pockets quickly. Frank took a step back, panicking - could Gerard see him for what he really was? It wasn’t too far fetched of an idea, it had happened before to other Reapers, there were people who could see - but Gerard spoke up and eased his suspicions. 

“I think I just heard the bell. Um. I’m gonna go. See you around.” He stood stiffly at the edge of the cemetery for another second, looking at Frank through his hair in what he couldn’t decide was a peculiar manner or not, and vanished into the trees. Frank stood there for a moment, trying to parse out what had just happened. He'd suspect Gerard of being a supernatural entity of some sort, if he wasn't one himself. The dude was seriously weird. 

He walked out of the cemetery, taking the path this time. He could already feel the presence of the high school through the trees, smothering his senses with that cocktail of fear and self-consciousness that made every school in existence feel exactly the same. The second bell rang, signalling that he was supposed to be in class already (so Gerard hadn’t been lying to get away from Frank; that was reassuring) and he snuck into the hallway, trying to keep the door from slamming behind him. He was mostly successful. 

He was tiptoeing along the disgustingly beige corridor, fumbling with his crumpled schedule, trying to determine his first period class and what the name of his teacher was, Mr. Brogan or Biggins or something dumb with a B like that, when he became aware that someone was staring at him and that that someone was furious. He turned around and was immediately compelled to tuck his shirt in and get a buzz cut and join the football team, and he didn’t even really go to school in Lament, for fuck’s sake.

The woman standing in the hallway with him was very short, very severe, and (Frank’s Reaper senses told him,) VERY pissed off. She was radiating matriarchal entitlement and old lady perfume and wearing a stuffy grey cardigan. Frank disliked her immediately.   
“I take it you’re Frank Iero? The new student that transferred from New Jersey?” 

Frank ran his fingers over the straps of his backpack anxiously, taking down the hood of his jacket. He was pretty sure that it was disrespectful, or something. He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t been in school in a long time.

Apparently that was the wrong choice ‘cause she saw his tattoos and her already distasteful expression grew even worse. He tried to backtrack by being extra polite. Fuck this lady, seriously.

“Oh, um, yes ma’am. You’re…” He racked his brain for the name he’d seen on the top of his schedule. Mrs. O’Grady. Yeah, he was pretty sure. The principal and, he realized, resident mean boss lady. “Mrs. O’Grady, right? The principal?” He tried a smile, the one that had always worked on his mom to get out of trouble, even after she’d caught him smoking that one time. He’d gotten out of that one with nothing more than a lecture on health risks and how even though she and the whole entire world did it, he shouldn’t, blah blah blah. He hoped Mrs. O’Grady was as easily weakened, though it didn’t seem likely. 

Her already indignant posture got even more stiff and pissed off looking and she stared at him from over the top of her tiny old lady glasses, like he’d just said something so horribly offensive it was grounds for arrest. “That’s Ms. O’Grady to you, Iero. I am not married.” She said Ms. with a Z like all scary matriarchs seemed to do. Ridiculous. 

Frank cringed and hitched his backpack up his shoulders again and tried not to fidget. He kept his eyes on his shoes, mentally cursing himself for being so awkward. Couldn’t Dewees have made it so he wasn’t the new kid, on top of everything else? Cut a guy some slack, jeez. He looked up and tried to make friendly eye contact with the woman in front of him but she was staring at him with an anger voltage enough to power seven million hot tubs, so he left it alone. 

“You’re late, Iero. I’ll let it go for your first day but I better not see you in the halls after the bells again. Get to homeroom.” She turned around and walked down the linoleum-tiled floor, her ugly orthopedic shoes clicking like an alarm with every step for any straggler who might be lurking down the hallway. Frank pulled his hoodie up again and set off down the corridor faster than before, so he didn’t run into any more angry, absurdly caricature-like authority figures on the way. He found the classroom he was looking for fairly quickly and stepped in, using his Reaper abilities to blend into the wall so that the middle-aged hardass teaching math at the front of the classroom wouldn’t make him stand at the front of the class and introduce himself, Christ. He sat down at a creaky desk in the back of the stuffy room and let himself stare out the window and be lulled into a catatonic state by the perpetual fog eddying just outside. Dewees better give him some major perks for this job, he thought, and no, he wasn’t holding onto the bad feelings from his hallway encounter with O’Grady. It was the teenagers, and the fucking fog, and Gerard, who kept sneaking into his thoughts like an eyeliner-smudged shadow, that were getting to him. It was Lament, and all its haunted storybook bullshit. Frank wasn’t prepared to deal.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shit gets...fuckin wild...ray toro is a sweet blessed angel (kind of,) frank is an asshole, and gerard dumps an entire container of glitter on his head every day as part of his morning routine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, sorry about the long fucking erratic period of time since my last update. if you know me then you know schedules, even loose ones, are not something i'm particularly good at. however, i am one tenacious motherfucker, and i WILL see this shit through to the end, for better or worse. hope you can stick with it. anyway enjoi xo i put my blood sweat and tears into this

-

The rest of the day passed more or less uneventfully. Gerard was, strangely enough, nowhere to be found almost all day long - you’d think someone as unusual-looking as Gerard would be hard to miss, but no, Frank didn’t see him until the last class of the day, which was English.

Of course he the only empty seat in the class had to be directly behind him. Frank sighed heavily and sat down, the seat creaking. He was pretty sure everything in the school had to be about a million years old. The place wasn’t decrepit, exactly, and on the surface it looked more or less normal - beige, boring, linoleum floors, but it had mildew in the ceiling corners and probably asbestos in the walls. It was also muddier than most schools; students tracked it in like crazy due to the mostly wet weather that afflicted Lament. Frank couldn’t wait to get back to his shitty apartment and call Dewees and tell him to get him out of the fucking high school. He hadn’t seen O’Grady since that morning but he figured it was only a matter of time.

He could feel the anxiety radiating off of Gerard in thick, nauseating waves, and he knew the anxiety was because of him. He could sense it in the same way you can sense a furious man staring at you. 

Frank lowered his eyes and stared at his hand tattoos, twirling a pencil between his fingers. He looked over to his left at the girl sitting next to him. She looked like she was about to pass out. There was a kid in a Ramones shirt with frizzy hair diagonal to her who looked like he was actually paying attention, but the rest of the class, dressed in damp jackets and hiking boots and John Deere t-shirts, looked like they were all about to crash. The teacher was awake, too, but you could tell it was just barely. 

Frank sighed and started staring at the back of Gerard’s extremely greasy, tangled hair again. It looked like he’d dumped an entire container of glitter on himself before leaving the house - the dude looked like a fucking disco ball. Gerard turned around furtively and glanced back at Frank, but turned back around again when he saw that Frank was indeed looking at him. Frank attempted to smile at Gerard’s glitter-sprinkled back - it was more of a grimace, really - and ducked his head down toward his pitiful excuse for notes. Fuck high school. He hadn’t even finished the first time he went, before he died, and it had felt like he’d been there too long by the end of the first day. This was somehow worse. The anxiety and exhaustion of the students felt like it was slowly choking him and he was ridiculously on edge. He really just wanted to go home. 

The bell rang mercifully, marking the end of the day after another agonising five minutes of Frank fighting nausea and wanting his fucking freedom. He kept his eyes on the muddy linoleum and walked quickly out of the school, not pausing to look where he was going even once. He regretted that immediately when he ran into the kid in the Ramones shirt with the fluffy hair and fell to the floor, hard. He regretted it even more when he couldn’t scramble up in time and the kid decided to actually help him up. 

“Dude! Shit! Are you okay?!”

He actually seemed concerned, which was weird. Frank rolled over his back and stood up on his own - he couldn’t bear to touch anyone, if he did, the sickness he’d been ignoring all day would explode and he’d end up puking all over the hallway, and he didn’t want that. He turned around and stumbled toward the door, hoping the Ramones-shirt-guy wouldn’t follow him, and suddenly the bile in his stomach rose up to his mouth and he barreled through the schools double doors, collapsing into the bushes and retching like his life depended on it. He screwed his eyes shut tight and waited until it was over, and soon enough it was, and he became aware of someone kneeling next to him and holding his hair out of his face. He waited til his shaky breathing stabilized and then he sat down on a cinder block ledge nearby, looking up at the kind soul who had saved his freshly washed hair from a puke covered demise. 

Shit. It was the Ramones shirt kid.

Now that Frank was getting a better look at him, he really wanted to die, like, even more so than before, cause a random stranger he saw in English class had held his hair out of his face as he puked his guts out, and that random stranger was looking at him with the confusion and concern of his mother when he’d been alive and gotten sick. 

Frank tried to mumble out a simple “I’m fine” so the dude would leave him in peace with his misery, but all that came out was a faint groan. The kid sat down next to him and comfortingly put his hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, dude, take a breather. You look like a fucking zombie, seriously.”

Frank huffed out a short laugh at the hidden truth of the statement and coughed. “I think i’m okay now. Thank you.” He was about to stand up and escape to his shitty apartment where he could yell at Dewees on the phone, but the kid stood up and walked after him. Fucking hell.

“Hey! I’m Ray Toro, what’s your name?!”

Frank turned around and was about to say something shitty like “hey thanks for rescuing me from my own vomit but I never want to talk to you again,” but the look on Ray’s face, which bespoke absolutely nothing of wanting to be a dick to Frank, won him over and he realized he didn’t want to be mean to Ray after all. 

He turned around and stopped, trying to conceal the sheepishness he understandably felt because he couldn’t detect anything like shyness coming off of Ray. He realised he wringing his hands like a Victorian lady and stopped. “Frank. Frank, um, Iero.” He tried to keep from looking down at the ground like a shy fourth grader but he couldn’t help himself. “Uh - Can we start over?” He could feel the painfully obvious grimace on his face and was thankful that Reapers were physically incapable of blushing, cause seriously, fuck that. 

Ray’s easy laugh calmed him immediately, what the fuck, the guy had to have magic powers. Frank barked out a short laugh on his part, because honestly, what the hell, and without realizing, they both started walking into the forest. 

“Yeah, we can start over. Puking forgotten. Clean slate.” Ray laughed again, this pleasantly high-pitched giggle that made Frank’s attitude towards Ray Toro shift over from begrudging friendliness to normal friendliness. He felt a tiny surge of almost-panic at the thought of forming a friendship with the living - Molko would kick his ass, he’d have let down Dewees, who Frank promised he wouldn’t fuck up - and on top of it all, serious memory spells would have to be performed on the Ray if he found anything out. Ray didn’t deserve that. Frank shoved the unwelcome feeling away. Maybe Ray was friends with Gerard, he might be able to tell him something that the files hadn’t been able. Frank relaxed. His “friendship” with Ray could be for information purposes only. Ray wouldn’t have to know anything. It’d be fine. Everything would be fine.

Frank drew himself back to reality hastily when he saw that Ray was looking at him expectantly, framed by the deep greens and browns of the forest. He’d probably asked Frank a question.

Frank blinked and rubbed his eye blearily. Fuck. “Sorry, dude, what were you saying?”  
Ray grinned. “I was asking if you like music. And I complimented your tattoos, specifically your knuckle tattoos, HALLOWEEN and all that. Those are sick.” 

Frank managed a half-hearted grin and an eyebrow raise. “Thanks, man, about the tattoos. Halloween’s my birthday.” It wasn’t anymore, he was dead, dead kids didn’t have birthdays, but it wasn’t like he’d been lying. It had been his birthday, once. “And yeah, I do like music. Punk, shit like that. Sixties, seventies, eighties. The Cure, Black Flag, the Misfits.” Frank gestured to Ray’s shirt vaguely. “Ramones.” 

Ray was clearly so fucking over the moon that he looked like he was going to explode, with his eyes all wide and his grin looking like that of a fucking jack-o-lantern. “Dude! That’s so cool, oh my god, NOBODY cool goes to school here, this is awesome!” 

Frank’s grin faltered at that (he knew he couldn’t stay,) but he tried to smile again as he sidled up to Ray. He was gonna try and ask about Gerard now. Stay cool. Frank was cool. Cool as fuck. “What about Gerard, though? Gerard seems cool.”

Frank almost ran right into Ray because of how he stopped dead in his tracks and turned around slowly, slight panic in his eyes. Frank stepped back and clenched his fists self-consciously, feeling the intensity of Ray’s eyes boring into him. It was honestly a little creepy. 

“What?” Frank asked, hugging himself. He didn’t need this. He couldn’t handle it.  
Ray made an unidentifiable noise and sat down on a nearby log, patting the spot next to him as a signal for Frank to sit down. He did so somewhat begrudgingly and then there was a brief moment of Ray looking weirdly intense and then breaking the silence by saying “Dude, Gerard’s... bad news.”

Frank crossed his arms over his chest, suddenly indignant. “Bad news? What the fuck do you mean, bad news. I talked to him this morning in the cemetery, he seemed nice. A little spacey, but nice.”

Ray turned toward him, looking totally freaked out again. Frank suspected he said something he shouldn’t have again. 

“You talked to him?! He’s barely talked to anybody but his brother since last year when he had his accident.” 

This was news. Gerard had had an accident? Frank looked at Ray and he still looked as panicked as before, but Frank waved him on and Ray buried his face in his hands. 

“Okay, um. I guess you would’ve found out sooner or later, but anyway, about a year ago, everyone went to this football game. Gerard too, which was weird, but I guess Mikey dragged him out or something, or his mom made him go. Mikey’s his brother. Anyway, about halfway through the game, we hear some screaming, and everyone rushes over to the corner of the bleachers where it was coming from, and it’s Gerard, and he’s screaming. Just fucking writhing around on the floor screaming, and he’s scratching at his eyes, like Regan fucking MacNeil or something, screaming about something in the woods, and blood, and fucking - fucking demons, and he falls off the bleachers and breaks his arm.” 

Ray’s voice is wavering a little, like it had really scared him. “I’ve tried to talk to him a couple times, I figured he was lonely. He pretty much just brushed me off, but I kept at it, until one day, his sketchbook fell out of his bag and I went to pick it up for him and it was just full of drawings of the same person, someone with sharp teeth and dark rings around their eyes. Tattoos, i think, like you. Dark suit. It wouldn’t be so weird usually, like at first I thought it was a character or something, he’s always drawing, but the whole book was full of drawings of him and this writing, the same sentences over. I don’t remember what it said. He’s fucked in the head, dude.” 

Frank tried to ignore the chill creeping over his entire body, but it wasn’t working. He tried not to let it show in his expression and managed a scowl instead of the face he wanted to make, which was basically the face of stark, pants-shitting terror. Gerard had seen him, his real face, in some horrible spasm-inducing vision, and that wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. 

Frank sighed and turned to face Ray completely. “Just because someone’s fucked in the head doesn’t mean you should be scared of them. It’s not his fault. He needs some fucking help, not someone to warn people away from him.” 

Ray looked slightly chastised. “He scares me, man.”

Frank’s scowl deepened. “Well, he doesn’t scare me.” This wasn’t completely true, but it wasn’t like Ray had to know. “We should try and talk to him. Again.”

Ray dragged his feet through the dirt nervously. “I don’t know, man.”

Frank stood up with as much finality as he could muster and extended a hand to Ray to help him up. Ray took it after a moment of hesitation and Frank glared at him sternly - he knew how it felt having people scared of him for things he couldn’t help, it sucked donkey balls - and the two boys started trudging deeper into the forest, Ray following Frank a little hesitantly. 

“Wait, now? We’re going to talk to Gerard Way now? At his house?” 

Frank turned around on his heel and put his hands on his hips like his mom used to. It probably wasn’t as intimidating on him as it had been on her, but he hoped for the best. “Yeah, c’mon.”

Frank could feel the pull of the cemetery dragging him towards the headstones; he wanted to read them, sit among them, anything - but that wasn’t what he was going there for. He was going ‘cause it was practically in Gerard’s backyard. He knew he was walking in the right direction, so he relaxed and let his feet take him where they wanted to go. It was honestly such a fucking relief to let his instincts take over. 

Ray wasn’t having such a nice time, though, hacking through the bushes and getting mud in his sneakers. “Dude, what the fuck,” he grumbled, almost falling face-first into a particularly unfriendly bush. “I’ve lived in this town my whole life and I’m the one falling all over myself, not fair. Hey, where are you from, anyway?” 

Frank didn’t even blink. “Jersey,” he said, and regretted it immediately after, like what the fuck, he was dead, he wasn’t from anywhere, not anymore, but then he felt something like a solid knowledge solidify in him and he made up his mind. He was from Jersey. He’d been born there, and he’d died there, and it’d shaped him from the day he’d been old enough to comprehend it. He was always gonna be from Jersey. The thought comforted him and made him feel like less of a ghost. Jersey born, Jersey bred, Jersey dead. 

Ray had fallen into another bush. Frank half walked, half glided over and began untangling sticks and thorns from his hair. “Jersey, yeah. I’m from New Jersey,” he said, half to himself and half to Ray, who had about a million twigs sticking out from his hair. Frank reached over and pulled one out, frowning. Ray started picking them out one at a time, wincing when one would pull a little too hard. “New Jersey, huh? Cool. I heard the music scene is pretty rad over there.” 

Frank kept walking, letting out a vague “mm-hmm” in affirmation. He could practically smell the cemetery, the smell of grave dirt and the apprehension living visitors left behind, and the pull was so strong he knew they had to be right next to the place. He pulled some bushes aside to let Ray pass and there they were, in a garden of straggling crooked headstones and moss.

Fuck, there was Gerard’s house.

“We’re really doing this?” Ray sounded unsure.

Frank was having second thoughts too, but there was no turning back now. He brushed a damp leaf off his nondescript grey hoodie and exhaled a breath he realized he’d been holding.

“Yeah, we’re really doing this.”

-


End file.
